COSTA MESA – A man has been arrested on charges he left his infirm 80-year-old mother lying on a bathroom floor for two days, leading to her death.

Police also said Robert Dickerman, 47, had previously tied his mother to her bed and to a portable toilet.

Last week, prosecutors filed charges of involuntary manslaughter and elder abuse leading to death. Under state law, the elder abuse charge carries up to 11 years in prison because the victim was 70 or older. Manslaughter carries up to four years.

Costa Mesa police detectives arrested Dickerman at his home Tuesday. He was being held on $100,000 bail, according to jail records, and was scheduled to appear in court Thursday.

About 2 a.m. July 3, 2012, Dickerman called 911 to get help for his mother, Sgt. Ed Everett said.

Officers found Yoshiko Dickerman “lying in urine on the floor, in a fetal position, and in apparent physical distress,” police said in a news release Wednesday.

Robert Dickerman told officers his mother had slipped and fallen to the floor two days earlier while using the toilet. Dickerman tried to help her up, but “she refused and was combative,” he told police, according to the news release.

So he decided to let her lie on the floor, authorities said.

After Yoshiko Dickerman was taken to Orange Coast Memorial Medical Center in Fountain Valley, doctors found she was dehydrated and had open sores on the left side of her body, police said. She died the next day, and the coroner said the cause of death was sepsis, a severe form of inflammation caused by a bacterial infection.

Robert Dickerman later told detectives he was unemployed and had been his mother’s sole caregiver since 2001. Dickerman told police he did not have time to clean the home, which police said was “extremely dirty and cluttered.”

A next-door neighbor, who would not give his name, said the Dickermans’ garage was packed with newspapers and old mail, with barely space for a car to fit in. Everett called the conditions in the home “borderline hoarding.”

Before Yoshiko Dickerman’s son moved in and she became sick, things were far different.

Neighbors remembered her as a friendly woman who frequently took walks around the neighborhood and worked on her lawn. She would wave to people and smile at young kids when she saw them, one woman said.

Neighbor Barbara Torres said she only went in the Dickerman house once, before Robert moved in. The home was “immaculate” then, she said, with nice furniture.

Torres said Robert Dickerman moved in about five years ago, and his mother got sick in 2011, about a year before she died.

Neighbors said Robert Dickerman rarely came out of the house, and the family apparently never had visitors. Dickerman used to be an electrical engineer, but hadn’t worked in a decade, Everett said.

The drapes in the home were never open, Torres said. Another neighbor said she sometimes brought the Dickermans tomatoes when she had extra. She left the tomatoes by the door because they never opened it.

“I’m not kidding you; I saw him maybe three times,” the next-door neighbor said of Robert Dickerman, whose name he didn’t know.

He added later: “We knew something was up with them, something strange.”

Torres said she and other neighbors had talked about their concern for “Yoshi,” as they knew her. But they never expected anything so tragic.

Torres read her obituary in the paper last year, but assumed she’d died of natural causes. When Torres found out this week what had happened, she was left wondering why no one ever came to check on her neighbor.

It was not clear whether social workers, who investigate elder abuse, knew of the conditions at the home. Terry Lynn Fisher, a spokeswoman for the Orange County Social Services Agency, said the agency is barred by state law from confirming whether it has worked with any family.

But Fisher said people often hesitate to report possible problems if they’re unsure.

“I think about her now,” Torres said. “I just think I should have done something.”

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